What Is The True ‘Cost of Dull?’ Essential Takeaways From Our Keynote Speech 

🎥 Watch the Keynote: “The Cost of Dull”
Get exclusive access here to Peter Field and Adam Morgan’s powerful keynote from The State of Influence 2025.

The key ‘Cost of Dull’ concepts

This eye-opening deep presentation began with an introduction to ‘The Cost of Dull’ project that the pair of marketing pioneers started 18 months ago. Here are the key concepts that drive this pioneering project.

The ‘Cost of Dull’ project

The project’s purpose is clear: warning today’s marketers and creators about the growing trend toward dullness. Here, the marketing expert quantifies the real cost of dull content, and the value of partnering with companies like WeArisma to bring color back to marketing.

The performance marketing problem

Field explains how the performance marketing revolution over the past 15 to 20 years has led to disinvestment in brand building. 

Many marketers are being told they don’t need brand building and can rely solely on bottom-of-funnel performance marketing. What’s clear is that campaigns focused on brand building significantly outperform those that don’t.

Dullness has a negative impact on brand building

Adam’s enlightening insights also demonstrate that interesting campaigns vastly outperform dull ones when it comes to strengthening brand perceptions. 

The data shows dull campaigns with enormous budgets (over 10% share of voice, representing millions in spending) achieve dramatically worse results than interesting campaigns.

Facing the numbers: the pressing financial cost of dull 

How much does playing it safe with dull content actually cost? Here are some numbers that might surprise you:

• Seven percentage points more share of voice are required for dull campaigns to match interesting ones. This translates to £10 million per year for the average UK brand.
• £13 billion is wasted annually in the UK advertising economy because of uninspired content
• $189 billion is wasted annually in the USA. Believe it or not,  this is equivalent to Greece’s GDP.

Startups face specific challenges as they need to build brand awareness and trust to scale in their early years. These are the two most expensive metrics to achieve with dull marketing. Here are some numbers that might surprise you:

• £27 million extra per year is needed for brand awareness growth.
• £35 million extra per year is needed to build trust

The big social media challenge

Did you know? 40% of UK communications budgets (excluding search and direct marketing) now go to social media. Research from Dr. Karen Nelson Field shows:

• A minimum 2.5 seconds of attention required to build tangible brand memories
• 10+ seconds of attention is the sweet spot for effective brand building
• Social media attention is often low and most conventional ads lose most viewers within seconds

FYI: Social media attention data shows that by 2.5 seconds, only single-digit percentages are still watching ads, and by 10 seconds, virtually no one remains engaged.

The Influencer Solution

Peter Field’s solution lies in partnering with influencers that have an interesting voice and aesthetic. He argues that non-dull influencers can cut through the social attention barrier, making influencer marketing essential for getting real value from the massive budgets that flow into social media.

Adam Morgan’s framework to make marketing more interesting

Adam Morgan is committed to creating tools to help make marketing more interesting. He draws from 26 years of studying challenger brands and insights from experts outside marketing who make dull subjects interesting. These subjects include the likes of:

• Physics teachers

• Event organizers

• Reality TV producers

• Sesame Street writers

The framework explained

Morgan presents five key components to assess and improve the “interestingness” of marketing content and initiatives. Let’s explore.

1. Meeting your audience where they care

The Challenge: 56% of people in the UK can’t think of a single brand they feel connected with. That’s the lion’s share of consumers.

To overcome this pressing roadblock, brands need to meet their audience where they are and make an immediate human connection.

Take Bridget Jones, for example. Director Richard Curtis’s (now iconic) film initially failed with test audiences until he moved a clip of Bridget singing “All By Myself” in pajamas to the opening. This is a testament to the power of eye-grabbing, human-centric content.

Pampers is another brand that explores interesting angles and gets under the emotive skin of its audience. For instance, instead of focusing on technical features like “stop and protect,” Pampers connect with the emotional reality of “poonami” – something every parent has experienced and remembers.

Also, Dove reached the top position in our beauty report by working with creators who spotlight individual stories about body positivity. The brand has a talent for connecting with real human experiences, much like its “Face of 10” campaign, which addresses a common loss of confidence at 10 years old.

2. Denying key assumptions

The Principle: This idea is based on sociologist Maria S. Davis’s 1971 analysis, which shows that resonant social theories deny audience assumptions rather than confirm them.

The director of Assassin’s Creed notes that audiences crave surprise, which is increasingly difficult in an algorithm-driven world designed to give us what we already want.

Orange France: challenging common assumptions

To deny key assumptions and create impact, Orange France Successfully challenged the notion that women’s football is less exciting than men’s. How? By showing amazing football skills, before revealing it was actually the women’s team through CGI manipulation.

3. Creating little dramas

To highlight this point, Field points us to ‘The Sesame Street Formula’. Here, the show’s head writer explained their longstanding success came from creating “little dramas” with two essential elements:

1. The audience must know what the character wants
2. The audience must know what’s in the way

The strategic application: A partner managing 25 challenger brands noted that commercially successful brands understand both answers and build drama into their core brand strategy, while struggling brands don’t.

Spotlight: How Back Market creates little dramas. Instead of running with a dull ‘cheap tech’ story, Back Market did something a little different. The brand created a compelling narrative about big tech manipulating consumers into wanting unnecessary new products to create something dramatic, disruptive, and impactful.

4. Showing distinctiveness and character

Introducing the Amplification Method. BBC Writers Academy creator John York’s advice here is: take a characteristic and amplify it 200 to 500% to create a truly memorable character.

To develop a campaign distinctive and full-bodied, LVMH successfully amplified its smoky, distinctive Ardbeg whiskey character into a unique brand personality that earned droves of meaningful engagement.

Insider insight: fast food authenticity. McDonald’s outperforms competitors in earned media value (EMV) and relevancy by empowering influencers with open briefs, allowing them to infuse their own character. 

Comparing McDonald’s vs. Wendy’s vs. Taco Bell, we’ve discovered that while Wendy’s used 26 creators (more than Taco Bell), they achieved lower media value because they stuck to dull scripts (you know, the usual, “I bought this, I ate this.”). 

Meanwhile, Taco Bell and McDonald’s partnered with creators who reinterpreted brand iconography, played with nostalgic elements like Happy Meal toys, and created unique experiences that shatter resistance to sponsored content. That’s where the magic lives.

5. Using the real bar for judgment

Introducing The Competition Reality. The real competition isn’t other brands in your category –  everything imaginable is competing for audience attention.

Another hard-hitting fact to consider is that audience expectations continuously evolve and increase, so what worked for influencers five years ago won’t work today. You’ve got to keep moving.

Looking back: A historical perspective. 60 years ago in Los Angeles cinemas, ads were tested with a single dial that measured one dimension only. 

Morgan suggests that despite having more sophisticated metrics today, we may have forgotten the most important and expensive measure: “Is this thing dull or not, and how are we going to stop it being dull?” 

You need to ask yourself this question every time you create content or develop a campaign – there really is no compromise.

Be bold. Be brave. Be you.

The presentation concludes with a clear call to action that marketers must prioritize. You must focus on making your work interesting rather than safe, as the financial cost of dullness far outweighs the perceived risks of being more engaging and creative. Be bold. Be brave. Be you. It’s always worth the risk.